The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said that it now has the capacity to carry out 3,000 COVID-19 tests daily.
This according to the Centre, was as a result of an increase in the number of testing laboratories to 12.
NCDC’s Director-General, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, disclosed this on Wednesday in Abuja at the briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.
“We now have the capacity for testing 3,000 per day. That capacity is not being fully utilized. That is why I focused on Lagos State and the FCT and the efforts they are putting to get more people tested and more samples in.
“The bottleneck now is not the testing, but collecting the samples from the right people and getting it into the lab.
“Ending of today, we are going to publish a testing and diagnostic strategy for the country so that everybody is aware of where we are and where we are going – short and long term.
“That is, how we are going to introduce the TB facilities (GeneXpert Machines), HIV testing, and how we are going to end up with one lab per state,” Ihekweazu said.
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